The force of law and the law of force: Iran and the making of a post-imperial legal order

Gill, Bikrum and Doutaghi, Helyeh 2026. The force of law and the law of force: Iran and the making of a post-imperial legal order. Middle East Critique 35 (2) , pp. 477-489. 10.1080/19436149.2026.2686515

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Abstract

This essay examines how imperial actors do not primarily legitimate violence through consistent legal reasoning, but through historically produced frameworks that racialize and depoliticize anti-imperialist resistance, rendering it ‘irrational’ and therefore ‘external’ to law. In this configuration, international law emerges from its colonial origins as a dual structure: it universalizes juridical norms while simultaneously preserving a latent ‘state of exception’ that authorizes imperial violence whenever core geopolitical or economic interests are threatened. Focusing on the latest US–Israeli aggression against Iran, the article analyzes how sustained resistance to hybrid warfare—including assassinations, covert and overt regime change operations, disinformation and media campaigns, comprehensive sanctions regime, and military aggressions—exposes the contradiction at the heart of this legal order. The very material capacities that provoke the suspension of law—namely sovereign military-industrial and economic autonomy of the Islamic Republic of Iran—also point toward the conditions for a potential post-imperial legal order. The essay concludes that a meaningful reconstruction of international law cannot be achieved through formal juridical reform alone, but requires a transformation of the global relations of force that currently sustain imperial hierarchy and render legal universality structurally incomplete.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Cardiff Law & Politics
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis (Routledge): SSH Titles
ISSN:	1943-6149
Date of Acceptance:	5 June 2026
Last Modified:	13 Jul 2026 15:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187760

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